Upsets abound as unseeded men make PNW Open finals

Pacific Northwest Open Championship spectators will witness something Sunday that has not happened for as long as any employee of the tournament can remember: two unseeded men singles players facing each other in the final.

Since 1990, every player that has won the men’s singles championship has been seeded in the tournament.

But this year’s tournament at the Tacoma Lawn Tennis Club has been a little different since four of the eight seeded players lost in the round of 16 on Thursday.

Nick Moxley, who is entering his third year as the tournament’s director, said the depth of talent in this year’s PNW Open has made the tournament so topsy-turvy.

“If those guys would have been down in Vegas, it would have been a pick ’em,” Moxley said. “Even though they were unseeded, I don’t think they were underdogs, but it’s really cool to see the depth and how anybody can beat anybody on a given day.

“You have one bad day and you’re done.”

On Saturday, Samir Iftikhar defeated No. 6 seed Jenson Brooksby in a tough two-set match, 6-4, 7-5. Brooksby, a 16-year-old high school junior who is ranked No. 1 nationally by tennisrecruiting.net, was not expected to lose to a unseeded player.

Iftikhar will take on Alessandro Ventre in the final match Sunday afternoon. The Brazilian got the best of Duke sophomore Spencer Furman in three sets, 5-7, 7-6, 6-4.

Furman beat No.1 seed Francisco Bahamonde in the quarterfinals Friday.

On paper, Ventre’s path to the finals doesn’t look as difficult as that of Iftikhar, who has defeated a seeded opponent in three of his four matches.

Not that that even matters, given what’s happened so far this tournament.

But the two will have an idea of how the other likes to play: Iftikhar beat Ventre in three sets during a tournament two years ago.

“He’s a very, very good player,” Iftikhar said. “It’s going to be a completely different match. He’s going to be hitting the ball very high and he’s going to be hitting a lot of winners, so two very different game styles.

“I’m just going to go out and play the game I know how to play and see what happens.”

Women’s singles going down to the wire

After neither had dropped a set in the PNW Open, fourth-seeded Michelle Okhremchuk from the University of Nevada took down top-seeded Dasha Ivanova in three sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, on Saturday.

Oregon Ducks junior Alyssa Tobita will join Okhremchuk in the finals after beating two-time PNW Open champion Gail Brodsky in two sets, 6-3, 6-2.

Brodsky is 11 months removed from giving birth to her second child and is also a teacher at Northwest High Performance Tennis in Kirkland, so she hasn’t had much time to reshape her game to how it was.

The women’s finals will start at 11 a.m. at the Tacoma Lawn Tennis Club.

This story was originally published July 29, 2017 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Upsets abound as unseeded men make PNW Open finals."